Ross Hardison

Ross Hardison

The breakthrough of sequencing the human genome created a need for professionals with backgrounds in life and computer sciences to analyze vast amounts of biological data for developing gene-based drugs and treatments. In response, Penn State World Campus is offering a new graduate certificate in applied bioinformatics that will train a new generation of biomedical researchers in computational thinking and procedures.

The first integrated understanding of how the human genome functions will be published this week -- the triumphant result of a collaborative five-year project called ENCODE, involving more than 440 researchers working in 32 labs worldwide. Penn State's contribution to the ENCODE project involves using the new ENCODE data to help explain how genetic variants that do not affect the structure of encoded proteins could affect a person's susceptibility to disease. The research findings are a significant advance in understanding the precise and complex controls over the expression of genetic information within a cell.

A massive database cataloging the human genome's functional elements -- including genes, RNA transcripts and other products -- is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers and the public, thanks to an international team of researchers. In a paper published in the journal PLoS Biology on April 19, the project -- called ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) -- provides an overview of the team's ongoing efforts to interpret the human genome sequence, as well as a guide for using the vast amounts of data and resources produced so far by the project.

Scientists at Penn State have shed light on some of the processes that regulate genes -- such as the processes that ensure that proteins are produced at the correct time, place, and amount in an organism -- and they also have shed light on the evolution of the DNA regions that regulate genes. The team focused on regulatory regions that, when bound to the protein GATA1, are thought to turn on genes that play an important role in the development of red blood cells. "Our findings could help others to develop drugs to treat people who suffer from sickle-cell anemia and other blood disorders," said Ross Hardison, the T. Ming Chu professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and the team's leader. The results will be published on Dec. 1 in the journal Genome Research.

I'd heard of the firefly trick—taking the gene that makes the bug blink and sticking it into a heretofore unblinking cell, say, a human red blood cell. I was hoping to see it done when I scheduled an afternoon last April in Penn State biochemist Ross Hardison's lab. But my tourguide, undergraduate researcher Monette Aujay, merely shrugged.

Genetics has come a long way from the humble monk Gregor Mendel and his quiet experiments with cross-breeding garden peas. In the hundred and 10 years since Mendel's death, the heuristics of heredity have exploded.